You can pretty much guess somebody's age by the length of their voice mail messages, can't you? If you're in your mid-30's or younger, you have spent most of your life with answering machines/voicemail, so you understand their purpose, and messages go like this:
"Yo, gimme a shout."
Pushing 40, or early 40's and you get the "Hey, what's up buddy...ahhhhhhhyeah, it's 5:45pm, thinking about going to Bennigan's, maybe I'll see you there. Hey, how'd last night go? See ya buddy!"
Not bad, but not great. But not bad.
And of course you get the fucking old people. These I fucking DREAD: when the cell rings, you don't wanna talk so you let it go to voicemail...and you're waiting for that "beep" to let you know that someone left a message...and a minute passes, another minute...jesus christ, you're thinking...finally you shrug "well, obviously they hung up w/o leaving a message" and then "beep!" new voicemail. Oh, god...
"Hi Xmastime, it's Mary Pat (oblivious of course to my having caller id like every other cell phone on the planet), your faaaaaaavorite aunt...I'm calling to ask when you're coming in on Tuesday the 22nd...I thought you said 4pm, but Irene is saying 4:15pm, so we wanted to get that straight, so...oh look! a dog!...so give us a call here at the house...555-555-5555 (again oblivious to my caller id)...we should be here, there's no parish supper tonight cause of the weather...boy, I hope it stops snowing in time for you to get here...though I guess we can still make arrangements if it does...but I don't think it will...but if it does, then we'll figure something out I'm sure...ANYways* like I said give us a call, let us know what time you're getting in on Tuesday...uuuuuuuuummmm...we can't wait to see you! So give us a call when you get in tonight (oblivious) and let us know...this is your faaaaaaavorite aunt, goodbye!"
HEAD EXPLODING.
And that's not even counting the "I know you're there, pick up" riff. Unreal.
* this is the kiss of death, the "you are wasting minutes of your life" word. Yeesh.
1 comment:
With the exception of mother dearest, 97% of the people that leave messages on my land line--I'm the last person in the US w/o a cell phone--are between the ages of 23 and 40. I have discovered that quite a few of them, regardless of how near or far from the 40 mark they may be, feel the need to leave a life-story-length message, despite my exhortation in TWO languages to make it BRIEF. [sigh]
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